At Snail's Pace
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Gwendal watches over.


**Title: **At Snail's Pace  
**Universe:** Kyou Kara Maou  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** GwendalxGunter, Gisela, and very, very faint mentions of ConradxYuuri  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Um, some of me messing with the characters' histories and some canon history mixed in there somewhere. Hopefully.  
**Word Count:** 2,137  
**Time: ** 1:23 (without editing)  
**Summary:** Gwendal watches over.  
**Dedication:** … uhm, who likes this pairing? Let's see… wracks brain Um. I can't think of anyone specific. SO! For all the GxG fans out there, as few as there may be. XD**  
A/N:** ...I still can't write the KKM fandom. rolls  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

When they were children in school Gunter got picked on for being delicate, and Gwendal sighed when his friend came running to him with tears in big violet eyes and dirt on his clothes.

"You need to learn how to be stronger," Gwendal told the other boy patiently, and made him dry the tear streaks from his face, clean the dirt from his knees and elbows.

Later he went and spoke to the boys picking on Gunter all the same, but he still thought it was important to let Gunter stand on his own two feet.

"They stopped picking on me when I told them to stop!" Gunter told him happily one day, and hugged Gwendal tight around the waist. "I didn't think I could do it."

"Well now you know," Gwendal said simply, and let himself be hugged.

Gunter really did become a rather assertive young man after all that. Everyone found him extremely respectable.

When they were a little bit older, Gunter, while excelling at all topics of intellectual leaning at the academy, found that he lacked the proper swordsmanship abilities for someone of his illustrious noble background.

"I just don't think I'm any good at it!" the lavender-haired man wailed one day in their dormitory, and quite threw a small fit on top of Gwendal's poor bunk.

"You need more discipline," Gwendal said simply, and sighed when his stuffed tiger was inadvertently kicked to the ground.

Gunter immediately looked contrite, and bent to pick up the poor, abused stuffed toy. "I'm sorry, piggy-chan," he cooed, and pet the handmade plush before setting it back atop the pillow.

"Tiger," Gwendal corrected him, and silently continued his studies.

He woke Gunter up at four am that day and dragged him to the field behind the dormitory.

The other young man writhed and whined and quite said that he didn't want to do it, but years and years of always being by Gunter's side had made Gwendal rather immune to his big puppy dog eyes and the way his bottom lip quivered just so. "Train," he'd instructed, and they spent an exhausting five hours straight doing just that, until they'd sussed out Gunter's major problems and Gwendal could tell him how to train to rectify them with the most speed.

"I didn't know it was that simple!" Gunter breathed in exhaustion as they'd lain out in the grass afterwards, the lavender-haired man beaming tiredly but brightly at Gwendal beside him.

Gwendal grunted and sat up. "Well now you know," he said, and dusted his pants off before heading back to the dormitory.

"Where are you going?" Gunter pouted after him.

"Keep working," Gwendal responded flatly, and headed to go change his clothes before he was late for the big economics exam he had that morning.

Gunter really did become a first-class swordsman after he dedicated himself to training intensely every day.

After their studies concluded at the academy they were returned to the Maou's service, and Cheri, quite ecstatic to have her Gwendal back, also welcomed Gunter home as one of her own sons. When they were quite alone, she sometimes chastised Gwendal for being such a snail. "Why don't I have another son yet?" she decried, and he pat her hand and wasn't really quite sure why any of that was _his_ fault when she could very well go off and have another son at any time if she really wished it.

He worked as her minister of affairs of state and tried not to let her distract him with her gossip and strange prodding while he was at the job.

"There's so much to do!" Gunter wailed after their first week back, and was quite swamped—latterly up to his waist—in paperwork.

Gwendal sighed and said, "You need to be more organized."

Gunter pouted at him for being so callous, and Gwendal got the silent treatment for a whole day. Luckily he had long since learned how to wait his friend out, and wasn't as affected by big puppy dog eyes and a quivering bottom lip as some of the other people in the castle were.

Gunter, predictably, started speaking to him again within the span of twenty-four hours, and during that time, while the other man was pacing and talking in long strings of excitation to Gwendal at his desk, Gwendal kept on working slowly, methodically, organizationally, until Gunter got tired of listening to his own voice and sat down to watch the other man.

"I didn't know it could go that quickly!" Gunter marveled after a little while, and tilted his head at Gwendal appreciatively. "That's just like you."

"Well now you know," Gwendal grunted in response, and finished up well before dinnertime.

Gunter smiled and laughed and nodded. "I'll be caught up to you by tomorrow," he assured his friend, and turned to go.

Gwendal, having absolute faith in the other man and the fact that he'd figured everything out just by watching, talked to Cheri that evening and told her that from now on it should be okay for Gunter to do all of his own paperwork. "He just needed the time to figure it out on his own," he explained.

"Maaa," his mother cooed, and played with a strand of his hair teasingly, "but it's so much more _romantic_ when you secretly do half of it for him every day."

He sighed and excused himself to bed while she pouted after him and called him a handsome snail, but a snail nonetheless.

Gunter, as predicted, really did become topnotch at his paperwork, after that.

When wartime came they didn't see a lot of each other as commanders of different battalions, but Gwendal didn't worry because he knew that since their youth, Gunter had become a commanding, respectable, well-organized, and capable fighter. So Gwendal fought his own battles and didn't think of Gunter because he was very certain that at war's end they would be victorious and reunited once again.

Gunter worried about Gwendal because it was in his nature, and fretted at night in his tent as to whether the other man was taking proper care of himself. He eagerly awaited news of Gwendal's exploits and was relieved time and time again as he heard of Gwendal's military brilliance, if only because it meant that his friend was alive and well. He counted the days until this horrible war would end and prayed that no matter what the outcome might be, that they would be reunited once again.

Gwendal returned from the war tired, but victorious, and just as he knew he would, he found Gunter waiting for him in the courtyard of the castle when he got back, alive and well.

Except there was something unexpected too, and when Gwendal saw the green-haired baby in his friend's arms he was rather surprised at Gunter's actions for the first time in a long time.

"She needs me," Gunter had said, and Gisela cooed and tugged on a small fistful of her new father's hair like she was agreeing with him.

It would be difficult, Gwendal knew, but he trusted his friend as a capable man.

Not long thereafter, the wails of a baby often split the air of the castle late at night, and Gunter seemed very tired, having to get up and care for her all by himself during those times.

"I didn't know it would be so difficult," he confided quietly to Gwendal one morning, with dark circles under his pretty eyes and a decidedly limp aura to the rest of him where Gwendal was used to seeing sparkles of joy and exuberance.

Gwendal ate his breakfast and looked out the window. "You need help," he said, simply, and Gunter nearly collapsed onto the grey-haired man in relief.

And so, sometimes Blood Pledge Castle saw one of the country's most highly ranked military and public officials walking around rocking a small infant in his arms and with several stuffed animals strapped to his sides like weapons.

Gunter and Gwendal learned fairly quickly that Gisela liked soft toys, and that simply rocking her wasn't enough to get her back to sleep at night. She had to be walked.

"I didn't know it would be this straightforward!" Gunter murmured one late night, and reached out to tickle one of the sleeping baby's petal soft cheeks.

"Now you know," Gwendal whispered, and cradled Gisela for a moment longer in his arms before he moved to set her down in her bassinette, beside the little knitted teddy bear he'd made her. It tipped over when he put her in, and Gunter smiled and set it upright.

"There we go, neko-chan," he soothed at the toy, and looked at Gwendal in the dim light of the nursery.

His eyes practically glowed with warmth, and Gwendal had to look down again, into the crib. "It's a bear," he corrected, before turning to leave. "We'd better get some sleep," he told his friend then, and retired to his own quarters without a backwards glance.

As it turned out, Gunter really did become an excellent father.

And, Gwendal couldn't help but think, Gisela really was a lovely little girl.

Years and years and years later, when Gisela had grown from that lovely little girl into a lovely young woman, she watched her father huff about in jealousy while Yuuri-heika unwittingly flirted rather adoringly with Sir Weller in the courtyard below.

"Heika doesn't love me," he wailed, and looked at his daughter with big mibbly puppy dog eyes.

She sighed patiently and told her father, "You need a boyfriend," rather simply. He choked on his own spit and practically had a fit of embarrassment at her words right then and there, but luckily she was used to his mannerisms enough that they didn't really bother her all that much anymore.

"Gisela, don't say such things!" he admonished, though his voice was wavery enough that she didn't find his orders particularly compelling.

So she hugged him around the waist instead and looked up at him with great big eyes all her own, knowing that while she might have inherited one father's pragmatic nature, she'd also managed to inherit the other's compelling personality. "Ne otousama," she said, sweetly, "here's what you do."

He blushed at her afterwards, but even he had to admit, "I didn't know it would be that easy."

"Now you know," she'd replied, and urged him on with silent cheers.

She was certain he would be a very seductive lover.

That evening, Gunter visited Gwendal in his room, as the other man was crocheting before bed.

"Gunter?" he asked, and blinked up as his friend stole inside.

"This time we both have a problem," Gunter said, and his cheeks were a delicate shade of pink by candlelight.

"What's wrong?" Gwendal asked, putting his needle down and standing, ready once again, to come to the aid of a friend in need.

"I need a boyfriend, and you are a snail," Gunter said almost shyly, and made Gwendal blink again, because he wasn't quite sure how those two things were related.

It was very clearly, the first problem Gunter had ever had that Gwendal didn't immediately know how to help with.

Dumbly, he just said, "I'm a Mazoku," instead, because even if he wasn't used to this, he was at least used to correcting Gunter's rather crazy (in his opinion anyway) misconceptions of what things were, when they were obviously something else entirely.

Gunter laughed then, maybe a bit nervously, and Gwendal noticed that his eyes were luminous.

"No, I'm quite sure you're a snail," the lavender-haired man said and took a deep breath to calm himself, using all the assertiveness he'd learned in grade school as he stepped forward with all the grace he'd learned training with swords at the academy.

Gwendal stared.

Gunter smiled then, and it had all the aplomb of the respectable state official he'd come to be over the years. "Gisela," he started gently, and this was said with all the fondness of a good father, "agrees with me. But we've discovered how to fix it, thankfully."

"Huh," Gwendal said, and wondered where this was all going, and why Gunter suddenly made him nervous.

"Here we go then," Gunter said in a murmur that might have been for himself if he hadn't been close enough for Gwendal to hear it too, now.

It was really simplest solution to all of their problems that ever could have been, because Gisela had turned out rather pragmatic, perhaps due in part to having spent years and years with Gwendal growing up.

Gunter leaned forward and kissed Gwendal.

And Gwendal's first thought as he felt his arms come up to wrap around Gunter was simply, "_I can't believe it was this easy_."

But now he knew.

**END**


End file.
